It has often occurred to me while writing this book that the absolute history of one such head-dress would be of more help than these isolated remarks, which have to be dropped only to be taken up in another reign, but I have felt that, after all, the arrangement is best as it stands, because we can follow, if we are willing, the complete wardrobe of one reign into the next, without mixing the two up. It is difficult to keep two interests running together, but I myself have felt, when reading other works on the subject, that the way in which the various articles of clothing are mixed up is more disturbing than useful.
The wide sleeve to the gown, once part and parcel of the gown, was at last made separate from it—as a cuff more than a sleeve naturally widening—and in the next reign, among the most fashionable, left out altogether. The upper part of the dress, once cut low and square to show the under-dress, or a vest of other stuff, was now made, towards the end of the reign, with a false top of other stuff, so replacing the under-dress.
Lacing was carried to extremes, so that the body was pinched into the hard roll-like appearance always identified with this time; on the other hand, many, wiser women I should say, were this the place for morals, preferred to lace loose, and show, beneath the lacing, the colour of the under-dress.
Many were the varieties of girdle and belt, from plain silk sashes with tasselled ends to rich jewelled chain girdles ending in heavy ornaments.
For detail one can do no better than go to Holbein, the master of detail, and to-day, when photographs of pictures are so cheap, and lives of painters, copiously illustrated, are so easily attainable at low prices, it is the finest education, not only in painting, but in Tudor atmosphere and in matters of dress, to go straightway and study the master—that master who touched, without intention, on the moral of his age when he painted a miniature of the Blessed Thomas More on the back of a playing card.
EDWARD THE SIXTH
Reigned six years: 1547-1553.
Born, 1537.